Savitri Devi - "Le rocce del sole"

[Ottobre Nero]

Letters to Martin Kerr

by Savitri Devi

Edited by R.G. Fowler




[New Delhi
13 May 1979]

A Bit of Ancient History—Segregationism . . . and War (for 20th century Americans)

“This is the Southern Frontier... No Negro is permitted to pass this boundary northwards, either by foot or by boat. . .”

Which awful segregationist has written these words? Shocking they sound! The Anti-Defamation League should look into the matter, surely!

It is [too] late, however, to change this. The words were written—cut into hard stone—over four thousand years ago. The Anti*Defamation League, or any equivalent of it, was not yet invented, and any attempt to bring the spirit of such a body into action would have been met with universal contempt on the part of the people and with the severest penalties on the part of the authorities in power. The quoted words are part of the inscription which can be seen to this day upon the boundary stone set up by the order of Pharaoh Senusret III, the fifth king of the Twelfth Egyptian dynasty (if I remember well) at Semneh (or Samnin), one of the two fortresses he had built upon the hills on each side of the Nile, some 30 miles above the Second Cataract, after his first military expedition into Nubia (the “Sudan” of today) in the eighth year of his reign. The expeditions of Senurset III followed those of his predecessors. Already under Senusret I—three generations before—the region of the third cataract was Egyptian and ruled by Hapzefa of Siut, who was buried at Kerma under a mound, with his slaves slain all around him (reference: Reisner: Boston Museum Bulletin, April 1914-December 1918).

The main incitation of the Twelfth dynasty pharaohs to conquer the Sudan (Nubia) was the wish to control the Nile more effectively and to be able to foresee more accurately the probable height of the yearly inundation on which the prosperity of Egypt depends. The regulation of the great river was looked upon as the highest duty of an Egyptian ruler—which it is, in fact, to this day. In addition to this, there was also the desire to acquire the gold with which the “Wadi Alaki” and other Nubian desert valleys were full.

The remainder of Senusret III’s inscription at Semneh is interesting: “No boat of the Negroes is to be allowed to pass northward forever. . .”

And a few years later,

Year 16, third month of Peret, His Majesty fixed the frontier of the South at Heh ... I advanced up-river beyond my forefathers; I added much thereto. What lay in my heart was brought to pass by my hand. I am vigorous in seizing, powerful in succeeding, never resting; one in whose heart there is a word which is unknown to the weak; one who arises against mercy; never showing clemency to the enemy who attacks him, but attacking he who attacks him. For to take no notice of a violent attack is to strengthen the heart of the enemy. Cowardice is vile. He is a coward who is vanquished on his own frontier, since the Negro will fall prostrate at a word: answer him and he retreats! If one is vigorous with him, he turns his back, even when on the way to attack. Behold! These people (the Negroes) have nothing terrible about them; they are feeble and insignificant; they have buttocks for hearts! I have seen it, even 1, the majesty, it is no lie! I have seized their women; I have carried off their folk; I have marched to their wells; I took their cattle; I destroyed their corn seed, I set fire to it. By my life and my father’s, I speak the truth!

Every son of mine who shall have preserved this frontier which My Majesty has made, is indeed my son and born of My Majesty, verily a son who avenges his father and preserves the boundary of him who begat him. But he who shall have abandoned it, he who shall not have fought for it, behold, he is no son of mine he is none born of me. Behold! My Majesty has set up an image of My Majesty upon this frontier, which My Majesty has made, not from the desire that ye should worship it, but from the desire that ye should fight for it! (Text in Lepsius, Denkmaler, ii,136,1)

In the days this was hewn out in granite by the scribes of Senusret III, our Aryan forefathers, from the far North that they had left on foot and in their bullock carts centuries before (for climactic reasons, most probably) were just pouring—or were about to pour—through the famous Khyber pass, into highly civilized India, technically far in advance of them.

They brought with them the war horse—unknown to old India as to the Sumerians, maybe racially akin to it, who used donkeys in their local wars—and . . . iron, iron more precious than gold, out of which deadly arrows could be made.

And they brought their beautiful hymns—many of which are still chanted to this day by the living Brahmins the hymns of the Rig Veda (in which there are references to . . . The Northern Lights, unknown to India; see Tilak’s The Arctic Home in the Vedas)—their beautiful hymns and their Sky Gods, the “Devas,” i.e., “The Shining Ones,” foremost Surya, the Sun.

Early in the morning as The Orb would rise, Sri Asit Krishna Mukherji, my husband—whose birthday it is today, by the way (was born 13 May 1904)—would stand facing the East, and recite, in Sanskrit, twelve of the main Sacred Names of the Sun: “Giver of Life,” “Father of Light,” “Great One of Effulgence,” . . . etc.—beautiful names.

He was as fair in complexion as a Southern European—many of whom, for instance a Spanish pupil of mine, are much darker than he was—and so proud of his Aryan origin. “You people in Europe,” he once told me, “have no caste system. So how can you be sure that not baptised Jews did not enter the succession of your ancestors, at some time or other, during the Middle Ages? We high caste Hindus know who we are!”

By the way: don’t call me “Mrs. Devi.” It means nothing. Devi (feminine of Deva, i.e., Goddess) is just a title that any Hindu woman of an alleged Aryan caste—a Brahmin or a Kshatriya—is, according to tradition, allowed to put after her individual name. Nowadays, with the propaganda of Democracy (a gift of the Christian missionaries and of the British education system) there are many Indian women and girls who call themselves So-and-so “Devi” without having any right to do so—already when I first came to India, but not so much so.

Regularly, a woman of any non-Aryan caste—i.e., the overwhelming majority of Indian women—should call herself So-and-so Dasi—the word “Dasi,” feminine of “das” (slave or servant). The old, honest, clean, and efficient maid we had when Mr. Mukherji and I lived under the same roof in Calcutta, was of the Maheshya caste (a peasant caste from West Bengal). She was Sindhubala Dasi—never would have dreamed of calling herself “Devi”!

The name Savitri (Solar Energy—the feminine of Savita, one of the names of Surya, the Sun) was given to me by the girls at the Shantiniketan University where I spent six months in 1935 brushing up my Bengali (that I had learnt alone) and reading Hindi. I then wrote a book in French, L’Etang aux Lotus (The Lotus Pond, impressions about India) and took “Savitri Devi” as an appropriate pen name. Then (1937 and 1939) I wrote two other books in English, A Warning to the Hindus and The Non-Hindu Indians and Indian Unity, and signed them “Savitri Devi.”

Mr. Mukherji I then did not know (till 9 January 1938). He gave me his name—we were co-fighters—at the outbreak of the war (September 1939) so that I should not be interned by the British as an undesirable foreigner (I had Greek nationality) well-known to be against the British war effort, i.e., on the German side, just as Mukherji himself was, but he was cleverer than I.1 They kept him two days, and he slipped out of their clutches . . . while continuing his activities on the sly.

So I am not “Mrs. Devi” but Mrs. Mukherji—or if you like, Savitri Devi Mukherji—or Savitri Devi—but not “Devi” alone. I did not add Mukherji to my pen name when I married (September 1939) as three books were already circulating under the name of Savitri Devi.

Sri Girija Kanta Goswami, the priest of the “Hindu Mission” (for which I used to lecture) married us according to Hindu rites, I in scarlet, he in white, before a fire—no Hindu ceremony without one!—with three swastikas, painted in red, against the wall—and “in presence of the Sun, Moon, and all the heavenly bodies, as witnesses,” at about 10 o’clock at night.

But strictly speaking, the marriage could not be regular as I was not a “rari Brahmin’s” daughter from Bengal—a girl of his own “sreni” or sub-caste. So, to be faithful to time-honoured tradition completely, we remained, both of us . . . just co-fighters without any more personal link. And [illegible] we (I, at least) never regretted not having ever experienced what, in his words, “all the living, including cockroaches, know.” I don’t think he ever regretted it either.

“My brothers have children,” he used to say, “so the family goes on. We have a different calling.” And shortly before his death, thinking of the fall of some of his own nephews (two of his sister’s sons, Communists, of all things!), he was glad to have lived as he had, indifferent to all but the call of Aryan tradition.

Hope this will not bore you.

With a hearty Heil Hitler!
Savitri Devi Mukherji


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New Delhi
15 May 1979

Dear Comrade Kerr,

I hope I didn’t bore you with my “bit of ancient history.”

I was too crushed by the awful heat of Delhi’s summer (it is summer, here, since March) to go to the length of writing something of my own inspiration for White Power. I am not of those privileged ones who have air-conditioning in their lodgings. I have merely a fan above my bed, in my one room and kitchen tiny flat. And that fan—under which I am lying, whenever I am not forced to get up, either to go and get food for my cats, or to go and teach my few private pupils: earn my living and that of my animals, home ones and strays who depend on me—that fan, I say, does nothing more than agitate burning air (45 degrees centigrade in my room, under the fan, a few days back: hardly less than outdoors in the shade). Now you can imagine the furnace in the sun! And when one goes out on foot, be it to walk to the station where one can hire some conveyance, you can imagine what it feels like. I am exhausted when I come home from my lessons or from shopping, and the only thing I am fit for is to call back into my mind the little I once learnt about ancient times.

I have started writing a new book—don’t know yet whether it will be in English or in French. But have not got beyond the first pages . . . because of the heat. It is about Ironies and Paradoxes of history. One of the “stories” will be about Clara Hitler—our Fuhrer’s mother—in desperation upon her death bed (1907) at the idea, “What will my poor Adolf do in life, without a job, without any diploma fit to get him one?” He was then eighteen years old and had come from Vienna, to be with her.

I thought the story I gave you about pharaonic “segregationism” in Twelfth Dynasty Egypt (one of the high peaks of Egyptian prosperity and art) in those remote times, might interest (by comparison) both you—if you happen to like history—and a few of our comrades. If any of them would like more information from me about Antiquity—so much more in our spirit than the world of today!—I am ready to give them all I can, i.e., the little I know from lifelong studies in which history (and geography, my father’s great hobby) had a privileged place.

Excuse me if for just now I do not write any more. I intend to write about my late husband—Sri A.K. Mukherji—for the National Socialist World. He deserved it. But I must wait till I can be myself again—after this heat. End of June, beginning of July, the “monsoon rains” are expected. Hurray! That means on the first day a sudden fall in temperature of 25 degrees (centigrade) and a downpour, amidst thunder and lightning. Lovely!

Here rain is feasted, celebrated. A grand daughter of one of my husband’s brothers is called “Varhsa,” i.e., rain—and her sister “Megla,” i.e., cloudy weather.” I suppose one would not dream of giving such names to girls in the USA. But these are Bengali girls. And rain means life to Bengal—save when there is really too much of it.

In fact all names in Bengal, and all over India, have a meaning, as in Greece: There is “Peace” (Shanti), Full-Moon (Purnima), “Born in the water” = Lotus (Sarajivi), Immortal (Amriba, which is masculine or feminine, and is the name of my youngest brother in law, now over seventy).

But does this all interest you? Excuse me if it does not! I am too knocked out by the depressing heat to find something more thoughtful to tell you.

With my renewed greetings,

Heil Hitler!
Savitri Devi Mukherji


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1 Savitri’s comparison here is unclear, but she is probably comparing an otherwise unknown arrest of A.K. Mukherji by the British authorities in India to her later arrest in Cologne, Germany, on 20 February 1949, for distributing National Socialist propaganda.





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The SAVITRI DEVI Archive

[Ottobre Nero]

Woman Against Time:
Remembering Savitri Devi’s 100th Birthday
by R.G. Fowler




Savitri Devi was a philosopher, a religious thinker, and a tireless activist on behalf of National Socialism, Indo-European paganism, vegetarianism, animal welfare, and deep ecology. She also dabbled in fiction-writing and espionage. In 1958, with the publication of her magnum opus, The Lightning and the Sun, she emerged as one of the most original and influential National Socialist thinkers of the post World War II era.

Savitri Devi was born Maximine Portaz on 30 September 1905 in Lyons, France at 8:45 a.m. She died shortly after midnight on 22 October 1982 in Sible Hedingham, Essex, England. Of English, Greek, and Italian ancestry, she described her nationality as “Indo-European.”

The circumstances of Savitri Devi’s birth were not auspicious. She was born two and a half months premature, having been conceived on the night of 13-14 March 1905. The delivery was difficult, and she weighed only 930 grams. The doctor told her parents that she would not live. She was to be an only child. Her mother Julia Portaz (née Nash) was forty, her father Maxim Portaz forty-four. Fearful of another difficult pregnancy, they never made love again. They named the baby Maximine Julia Portaz, then waited for her to die.

But the Life Force was strong in her. It had something great in store.

Savitri Devi had remarkable intellectual gifts, which she manifested at an early age. As a young child she learned French and English from her parents, then taught herself Modern Greek and some Ancient Greek. In time she became fluent in eight languages (English, French, Modern Greek, Italian, German, Icelandic, Hindi, and Bengali) and had knowledge of some twenty others (e.g., Ancient Greek, Urdu, and other Indian languages).

Savitri Devi also earned two Masters Degrees, in philosophy and chemistry, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Lyons. Her first two books were her doctoral dissertations: Essai-critique sur Théophile Kaïris (Critical Essay on Theophilius Kaïris) (Lyons: Maximine Portaz, 1935) and La simplicité mathématique (Mathematical Simplicity) (Lyons: Maximine Portaz, 1935).

Savitri Devi also had a vast knowledge of religion and history, particularly ancient history, as well as an amazing memory, particularly for dates and names. She was also a brilliant and mesmerizing teacher who could lecture at length on countless topics without reference to notes.

A self-described “nationalist of every nation” and an Indo-European pagan revivalist, Savitri Devi embraced National Socialism in 1929 while in Palestine. In 1935, she traveled to India to experience in Hinduism the last living remnants of the Indo-European pagan religious tradition. Settling eventually in Calcutta, she worked for the Hindu nationalist movement, which defended Hindu tradition from all universalistic and egalitarian ideologies, such as Christianity, Islam, Communism, and liberal democracy. In 1939, Savitri Devi married a Bengali Brahmin, the pro-Axis publisher Asit Krishna Mukherji (1904-1977). During World War II, she and her husband spied for the Japanese.

In 1935, while studying at Rabindranath Tagore’s Shantiniketan Ashram in Bengal, Maximine Portaz, at the suggestion of some fellow students, took the pen name Savitri Devi. “Savitri” is one of the Sanskrit names of the sun, and “Devi” means goddess. It was a perfect name, since Savitri was a devotee of what she considered the primordial Aryan religion: the worship of Life and Light. (“Devi,” by the way, is not a surname, but a title that all Aryan women in India are entitled to take. Thus Savitri Devi should not be referred to simply as “Devi” for short, but as “Savitri” -- just as Saint Paul is referred to as “Paul” not as “Saint.” By themselves, titles such as Saint, Mister, Doctor, or Devi do not refer to any particular person.)

While in India, Savitri authored several books: In 1937 she completed L’Etang aux lotus (The Lotus Pond) (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1940), recording her first impressions of India. The Lotus Pond combines vivid travelogues with philosophical reflections on Indian culture and tradition. Her next book, A Warning to the Hindus (Calcutta: Hindu Mission, 1939), is her manifesto of Hindu Nationalism. Hinduism is a radically pluralistic and tolerant religion, and this often blinds Hindus to the dangers posed by the intolerant Biblical religions and their secular offshoots: liberal democracy and communism. Savitri seeks to awaken Hindus to this danger and demonstrate the necessity of cultivating a unified Hindu national consciousness that cuts across yet respects and preserves India’s myriad communal and caste distinctions. Savitri also clearly thought that such a Hindu national consciousness was a necessary condition for Indian independence. A Warning to the Hindus was translated into six Indian languages and remains in print today. A third book, The Non-Hindu Indians and Indian Unity (Calcutta: Hindu Mission, 1940), deals with the question of the integration of non-Hindu minorities into a Hindu nation, both in the struggle for Indian independence and in an independent India. Savitri’s plea is for Indian Muslims, Christians, and other non-Hindus to recognize that they are Indians first, i.e., products of a Hindu culture, even though they do not profess the Hindu religion.

Another focus of Savitri’s interest while in India was a fellow sun-worshipper, the Ancient Egyptian “Heretic Pharaoh” Akhnaton (14th century BC), who was surely one of the most remarkable and enigmatic personalities in history. Akhnaton sought to replace Egyptian polytheism with a monotheistic religion that honored the Life Force under the image of the solar disc pouring forth its life-giving rays. Although Akhnaton’s monotheism was as intolerant as the Biblical monotheism that Savitri despised, she was fascinated with Akhnaton’s life and character and strongly attracted to his religion on philosophical, spiritual, and aesthetic grounds. Indeed, she believed that Akhnaton’s religion was essentially identical to the primordial Aryan religion of Life and Light, and she even suggested that Akhnaton’s reforms might have been influenced by the Mitanni, an Aryan people who had settled in upper Mesopotamia. Akhnaton himself was part Mitannian, through his paternal grandmother Mutemwiya and perhaps also through his maternal grandfather Yuya, and there were other Mitannians present at the Egyptian court as well.

Savitri’s first publication on Akhnaton is a pamphlet entitled Akhnaton’s Eternal Message: A Scientific Religion 3,300 Years Old (Calcutta: A.K. Mukherji, 1940). This was followed by a children’s novel, Joy of the Sun: The Beautiful Life of Akhnaton, King of Egypt, Told to Young People (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co. Ltd., 1942), illustrated with Savitri’s own drawings and paintings, which are crude and child-like, but appropriately so.

Savitri’s major work on Akhnaton is A Son of God: The Life and Philosophy of Akhnaton, King of Egypt (London: Philosophical Publishing House, 1946). Originally published by the Theosophical Society, the book was republished by the Rosicrucian Order as Son of the Sun: The Life and Philosophy of Akhnaton, King of Egypt (San Jose, California: Supreme Grand Lodge of AMORC, 1956). (Savitri regarded both organizations as subversive but was surely pleased that they published her book.) Son of the Sun has only recently gone out of print in English, and it has been translated into French, Dutch, and Portuguese.

Nearly 60 years later, Son of the Sun is still one of the best books on Akhnaton. It is beautifully written, with a novelist’s eye for concrete and colorful details. It is rigorously researched, drawing on all the relevant literature of the time. But most importantly, it is philosophical. Savitri draws upon Akhnaton’s Hymns to the Sun and other writings, the iconography associated with his cult, and contemporary documents such as the Amarna letters, to produce the most comprehensive and plausible reconstruction of Akhnaton’s world view ever offered.

In 1948, Savitri published Akhnaton: A Play (London: Philosophical Publishing House, 1948), which deals with the destruction of Akhnaton’s cult and the persecution of his followers after his death. It is a thinly disguised allegory for what was happening in occupied Germany at that very moment.

Savitri was devastated by the defeat of Germany in World War II. In June of 1945, near Varkala on the Malabar Coast, she resolved to kill herself by walking into the ocean. But when the water was up to her shoulders, suddenly the Life Force stirred within her. A thought flashed through her mind like lightning. It was a command: live! Live to bear witness to the truth. Live to see the day of vengeance, when the victors of 1945 are hurled into pits. Live to say, “I told you so!” As Savitri put it in a letter to George Lincoln Rockwell dated 28 August 1965, “I walked out of the sea for the sake of that future possible enjoyment, and for that alone, and started living without hope, only for hatred’s sake.”

From that point on, Savitri embarked upon an itinerant, ascetic life. Her two chief activities were tireless witness on behalf of National Socialism and caring for homeless and abused animals, primarily cats.

Savitri revered National Socialist Germany as a Holy Land for all Aryans. But she never saw it during its glory days. Her first glimpse of it was in 1948, in ruins. Gold in the Furnace (Calcutta: A.K. Mukherji, 1952) is Savitri’s dark and powerful account of her experiences in occupied Germany in 1948 and 1949. But Savitri did not regard the destruction of the Third Reich as the end of National Socialism, but as a purification -- as a trial by fire that would separate the base metal from the gold -- as the prelude to a new beginning. Thus Gold also contains chapters on the philosophical foundations and positive political program of National Socialism. In 1949, Savitri was arrested, tried, and imprisoned by the British Occupation authorities for distributing National Socialist propaganda leaflets. She describes her experience in Defiance (Calcutta: A.K. Mukherji, 1951). In 1953, Savitri made a pilgrimage to sacred National Socialist sites in Austria and Germany, describing it in her book Pilgrimage (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1958).

Savitri’s greatest work is The Lightning and the Sun (1958), which synthesizes National Socialism and the Aryan cyclical theory of history and advances the stunning claim that Adolf Hitler was an avatar -- a human incarnation -- of the Hindu god Vishnu, the sustainer of order. According to Aryan tradition, history moves in cycles, beginning with a Golden Age or Age of Truth and declining from that point until one reaches the nadir, the fourth age, the Dark Age or Kali Yuga, in which evil and falsehood reign. At that point, the forces of decay expire from their own corruption and a new Golden Age dawns. According to Hindu tradition, the present Kali Yuga will be ended and the next Golden Age inaugurated by the tenth avatar of Vishnu, Kalki, the avenger, who is portrayed as a warrior on a white horse. When Hitler’s star was rising, Savitri Devi and many Indians thought that he was Kalki. When he was defeated, she concluded that Hitler was not the tenth avatar, but only his forerunner, and that Kalki has yet to come.

In The Lightning and the Sun, Savitri distinguishes between three kinds of men in terms of their relationships to the downward trajectory of history: Men in Time, Men above Time, and Men against Time. Men in Time are those who go with the downward flow of time and contribute to its disintegrating tendencies. Men above Time try to rise above history’s downward trajectory and insulate themselves from the sordidness of the world. Men against Time fight against degeneration and seek to restore the Golden Age. Their goal, of course, is impossible. One cannot turn back the clock. But Men against Time are born fighters. Resisting decadence is their duty, their destiny. It does not matter that they cannot win. But even if they fail to turn back the clock, they might speed it up, i.e., they might hasten the destruction of the Dark Age and help usher in a new Golden Age. The bulk of The Lightning and the Sun is devoted to illustrating these three types of men through three mini-biographies: Genghis Khan is the paradigmatic Man in Time, Akhnaton the Man above Time, and Adolf Hitler the Man against Time.

One of the many ways in which The Lightning and the Sun is an extraordinary book is that it is absolutely unbelievable and absolutely compelling at the same time. Probably no one who has read it has taken it literally. Savitri Devi herself probably did not take it literally. But her vision has poetic beauty and explanatory power. The Lightning and the Sun moves in the realm of myth. I believe that Savitri’s goal was to create the founding myth of a new religion. Savitri was fascinated with Paul of Tarsus, who founded a religion by taking a failed political revolutionary and transforming him into an incarnation of God who had come to save the world. And in less than three centuries, the religion Paul created triumphed over the Roman Empire. Savitri too took a failed political revolutionary and transformed him into an incarnation of God who had come to save the world. She hoped thereby to found a religion that would serve as the vehicle for the ultimate triumph of her ideals.

Savitri Devi was also a passionate crusader for vegetarianism, animal welfare, and deep ecology. She summarized her views on these matters in Impeachment of Man (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji: 1959). In the 1970s, long before PETA and the Animal Liberation Front, an elderly and crotchety Savitri Devi and her Indian servant broke the law to liberate cats and dogs destined for medical experiments at the All India Institute for Medical Sciences in New Delhi. Savitri’s other book on animals is Long-Whiskers and the Two-Legged Goddess, or the true story of a “most objectionable Nazi” and ... half-a-dozen cats (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1965). A fictionalized autobiography focusing on her relationships with her favorite cats, this is Savitri’s best written and most eccentric book.

Savitri’s other writings include Souvenirs et réflexions d’une Aryenne (Memories and Reflections of an Aryan Woman) (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1976), her most comprehensive presentation of her philosophy; and And Time Rolls On: The Savitri Devi Interviews (Atlanta: Black Sun Publications, 2005), the edited transcripts of ten hours of interviews given in New Delhi in 1978, which is an ideal introduction to Savitri’s life and thought.

Savitri Devi’s 100th Birthday will be honored today. But it will be a quiet affair. A few of her surviving friends will call one another and reminisce. Those whose lives she has touched are scattered over the globe. They cannot not gather together to raise a toast, so they will raise their toasts alone. In Germany, Regin-Verlag is publishing a special issue of the magazine Junges Forum in Savitri’s honor. They are also publishing The Lotus Pond and Impeachment of Man in German translation. In England, Historical Review Press has published a new edition of Gold in the Furnace. In the United States, Black Sun Publications is bringing out And Time Rolls On: The Savitri Devi Interviews. In cyberspace, I flatter myself to think that people all over the globe are reading these words. I had also hoped that my Web site, the Savitri Devi Archive would appear today, but it has been delayed. When it is up, you can buy copies of And Time Rolls On there.

How can you honor Savitri today, if you are so inclined? In a letter to a young American comrade dated 13 April 1975, Savitri discussed how she would celebrate Adolf Hitler’s approaching birthday:

This is just a short note to tell you how I shall think of you (and of all our comrades and superiors far and near) on the great Birthday a week ahead. It happens to be a Sunday this year, so -- thank goodness I shall not have to go to my dreary work and shall be able to be entirely alone and just ... think. I am thinking our Führer would be now -- in a week’s time -- 86, were he alive. And I wonder whether we, the few of His disciples in whose lives He actually has the first place, are as numerous and fervent as were the early Christians in 86 A.D., that is to say, under Emperor Domitian. There had been a spectacular persecution of Christians in 64 AD (under Nero), but none since. But surely one would have burst out laughing on hearing that “one day” the despised and now and then persecuted sect would dictate its dogmas to the whole West and even force them into yet undiscovered continents and islands. Who could have imagined the personality and power of Philip II of Spain in those far gone days? And who can tell now, whether there is or not, in 1500 years to come, to rise some equally powerful Aryan racialist, a worshipper of our Führer, our equivalent of Philip II the Catholic? In one way it is a good thing that the future -- although it exists already, as well as does the past -- is totally unpredictable to finite minds.

It is good that we cannot predict the future because that allows us to hope. So honor Savitri Devi’s 100th birthday by thinking, and hoping.

Savitri Devi’s 100th Birthday will not be celebrated like those of two other philosophers who were also born in 1905: Jean-Paul Sartre and Ayn Rand. There will be no international scholarly symposia, no newspaper articles, no souvenir t-shirts and coffee mugs. But this is to be expected. After all, both Sartre and Rand -- one a Communist, the other a libertarian individualist -- are united in their opposition to all racial nationalism, except Jewish supremacism. (Rand was born a Jew, and Sartre wished he had been.) In short, both Sartre and Rand were very much “in Time.” Their philosophies are celebrated precisely because they do not challenge the forces of decay but actually defend and promote them.

Savitri Devi, by contrast, was a Woman against Time. She will not find fame in this Dark Age, but in the Golden Age to come.

Revised and corrected 8 April 2006.








SAVITRI DEVI Archive

[Ottobre Nero]

La femme contre le temps :
pour le 100ème anniversaire de la naissance de Savitri Devi
par R.G. Fowler

Traduit par Arjuna





Savitri Devi fut une philosophe, une penseuse religieuse, et une activiste infatigable du national-socialisme, du paganisme indo-européen, du végétarisme, du bien-être animal et de l’écologie profonde. Elle tâta aussi de la fiction et de l’espionnage. En 1958, avec la publication de son œuvre principale, The Lightning and the Sun, elle émergea comme l’un des plus originaux et influents penseurs nationaux-socialistes de l’après Seconde Guerre Mondiale.

Savitri Devi était née Maximine Portaz le 30 septembre 1905 à Lyon en France à 8h45 du matin. Elle mourut peu après minuit le 22 octobre 1982 à Sible Hedingham, dans l’Essex en Angleterre. D’ascendance anglaise, grecque et italienne, elle se considérait comme de nationalité « indo-européenne ».

Les circonstances de la naissance de Savitri Devi n’avaient pas été de bon augure. Elle était née prématurée de deux mois et demi, ayant été conçue dans la nuit du 13-14 mars 1905. L’accouchement fut difficile, et elle pesait seulement 930 grammes. Le docteur dit à ses parents qu’elle ne vivrait pas. Elle devait être un enfant unique. Sa mère Julia Portaz (née Nash) était âgée de quarante ans, son père Maxim Portaz de quarante-quatre ans. Craignant une autre grossesse difficile, ils ne firent plus jamais l’amour. Ils nommèrent le bébé Maximine Julia Portaz, et attendirent ensuite qu’elle meure.

Mais la Force de Vie était forte en elle. Elle avait quelque chose de grand en réserve.

Savitri Devi avait de remarquables dons intellectuels, qu’elle manifesta à un âge précoce. Jeune enfant, elle apprit le français et l’anglais de ses parents, puis apprit toute seule le grec moderne et un peu de grec ancien. Avec le temps, elle parla couramment huit langues (anglais, français, grec moderne, italien, allemand, islandais, hindi et bengali) et eut des notions dans une vingtaine d’autres (par ex. le grec ancien, l’ourdou, et d’autres langues indiennes).

Savitri Devi obtint aussi deux maîtrises, en philosophie et en chimie, et un doctorat en philosophie à l’Université de Lyon. Ses deux premiers livres furent ses deux thèses de doctorat : Essai critique sur Théophile Kaïris (Lyon : Maximine Portaz, 1935) et La simplicité mathématique (Lyon : Maximine Portaz, 1935).

Savitri Devi avait aussi une vaste connaissance de la religion et de l’histoire, particulièrement l’histoire ancienne, ainsi qu’une mémoire étonnante, particulièrement pour les dates et les noms. Elle était aussi une enseignante brillante et fascinante qui pouvait faire des cours détaillés sur d’innombrables sujets, sans se référer à des notes.

Se décrivant comme une « nationaliste de toutes les nations » et comme une revivaliste païenne indo-européenne, Savitri Devi embrassa le national-socialisme en 1929 alors qu’elle était en Palestine. En 1935, elle voyagea en Inde pour rencontrer dans l’hindouisme les derniers restes vivants de la tradition religieuse païenne indo-européenne. S’installant finalement à Calcutta, elle travailla pour le mouvement nationaliste hindou, qui défendait la tradition hindoue contre toutes les idéologies universalistes et égalitaires telles que le christianisme, l’islam, le communisme et la démocratie libérale. En 1939, Savitri Devi épousa un brahmane bengali, l’éditeur pro-Axe Asit Krishna Mukherji (1904-1977). Pendant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, elle et son époux espionnèrent pour les Japonais.

En 1935, alors qu’elle étudiait à l’Ashram de Rabindranath Tagore à Shantiniketan au Bengale, Maximine Portaz, sur la suggestion de quelques autres étudiants, prit le nom de plume de Savitri Devi. « Savitri » est l’un des noms sanscrits du soleil, et « Devi » signifie déesse. C’était un nom parfait, puisque Savitri était une adepte de ce qu’elle considérait comme la religion aryenne primordiale : le culte de la Vie et de la Lumière. (« Devi », à propos, n’est pas un nom de famille mais un titre que toute femme aryenne en Inde a le droit de prendre. Donc on ne doit pas parler de Savitri Devi en disant « Devi », mais en disant « Savitri » – de même qu’on parle de Saint Paul en disant « Paul », pas « Saint ». Par eux-mêmes, des titres comme Saint, Monsieur, Docteur ou Devi ne se réfèrent pas à une personne particulière.)

Pendant qu’elle était en Inde, Savitri écrivit plusieurs livres : en 1937 elle termina L’Etang aux lotus (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1940), décrivant ses premières impressions de l’Inde. L’Etang aux Lotus combine de vivants récits de voyage avec des réflexions philosophiques sur la culture et la tradition indiennes. Son livre suivant, A Warning to the Hindus (Calcutta: Hindu Mission, 1939), est son manifeste du nationalisme hindou. L’hindouisme est une religion radicalement pluraliste et tolérante, et cela rend souvent les hindous aveugles aux dangers représentés par les religions bibliques intolérantes et leurs rejetons séculiers : la démocratie libérale et le communisme. Savitri cherche à éveiller les hindous à ce danger et démontre la nécessité de cultiver une conscience nationale hindoue unifiée qui transcende mais respecte la myriade de distinctions communautaires et de castes de l’Inde. Savitri pensait aussi clairement qu’une telle conscience nationale hindoue était une condition nécessaire pour l’indépendance indienne. A Warning to the Hindus fut traduit en six langues indiennes et reste disponible aujourd’hui. Un troisième livre, The Non-Hindu Indians and Indian Unity (Calcutta: Hindu Mission, 1940), traite de la question de l’intégration des minorités non-hindoues dans une nation hindoue, à la fois dans le combat pour l’indépendance indienne et dans une Inde indépendante. Le plaidoyer de Savitri est que les musulmans et les chrétiens indiens, et les autres non-hindous, doivent reconnaître qu’ils sont d’abord des Indiens, c’est-à-dire des produits de la culture hindoue, même s’ils ne professent pas la religion hindoue.

Un autre centre d’intérêt de Savitri alors qu’elle était en Inde était un autre adorateur du soleil, le « pharaon hérétique » Akhenaton de l’ancienne Egypte (XIVe siècle avant J.C.), qui fut sûrement l’une des plus remarquables et énigmatiques personnalités de l’histoire. Akhenaton cherchait à remplacer le polythéisme égyptien par une religion monothéiste qui honorait la Force de Vie sous l’image du disque solaire déversant ses rayons donneurs de vie. Bien que le monothéisme d’Akhenaton était aussi intolérant que le monothéisme biblique que Savitri méprisait, elle était fascinée par la vie et le caractère d’Akhenaton et fortement attirée par sa religion pour des raisons philosophiques, spirituelles et esthétiques. En fait, elle croyait que la religion d’Akhenaton était essentiellement identique à la religion aryenne primordiale de la Vie et de la Lumière, et elle suggéra même que les réformes d’Akhenaton auraient pu être influencées par les Mitanniens, un peuple aryen qui s’était établi en Haute Mésopotamie. Akhenaton lui-même était en partie mitannien, par sa grand-mère maternelle Mutemwiya et peut-être aussi par son grand-père maternel Yuya, et il y avait aussi d’autres Mitanniens présents à la cour d’Egypte.

La première publication de Savitri sur Akhenaton est un pamphlet intitulé Akhnaton’s Eternal Message: A Scientific Religion 3,300 Years Old (Calcutta: A.K. Mukherji, 1940). Il fut suivi d’une nouvelle pour enfants, Joy of the Sun: The Beautiful Life of Akhnaton, King of Egypt, Told to Young People (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co. Ltd., 1942), illustrée par les propres dessins et peintures de Savitri, qui sont sommaires et infantiles, mais appropriés au livre.

L’ouvrage majeur de Savitri sur Akhenaton est A Son of God: The Life and Philosophy of Akhnaton, King of Egypt (London: Philosophical Publishing House, 1946). Originellement publié par la Société Théosophique, le livre fut réédité par l’Ordre Rosicrucien sous le titre de Son of the Sun: The Life and Philosophy of Akhnaton, King of Egypt (San Jose, California: Supreme Grand Lodge of AMORC, 1956). (Savitri considérait les deux organisations comme subversives, mais fut sûrement contente qu’elles publient son livre). Ce n’est que depuis peu que Son of the Sun n’est plus disponible en anglais, et il a été traduit en français, en hollandais et en portugais.

Presque 60 ans plus tard, Son of the Sun est encore l’un des meilleurs livres sur Akhenaton. Il est bellement écrit, avec le coup d’œil d’un romancier pour les détails concrets et hauts en couleur. Il est rigoureusement documenté, s’inspirant de toute la littérature de référence de l’époque. Mais plus important, il est philosophique. Savitri fait appel aux Hymnes au Soleil et à d’autres écrits d’Akhenaton, à l’iconographie associée à son culte, et à des documents contemporains comme les lettres d’Amarna, pour produire la reconstruction la plus complète et la plus plausible de la vision-du-monde d’Akhenaton jamais proposée.

En 1948, Savitri publia Akhnaton: A Play (London: Philosophical Publishing House, 1948), qui traite de la destruction du culte d’Akhenaton et de la persécution de ses adeptes après sa mort. C’est une allégorie à peine déguisée de ce qui se passait en Allemagne occupée au même moment.

Savitri fut anéantie par la défaite de l’Allemagne dans la Seconde Guerre Mondiale. En juin 1945, près de Varkala sur la côte de Malabar, elle décida de se tuer en marchant dans l’océan. Mais quand l’eau lui arriva aux épaules, soudain la Force de Vie s’agita en elle. Une pensée lui traversa l’esprit comme un éclair. C’était un commandement : vis ! Vis pour témoigner de la vérité. Vis pour voir le jour de la vengeance, quand les vainqueurs de 1945 seront précipités dans les enfers. Vis pour dire : « Je vous le dis ! ». Comme Savitri le dit dans une lettre à George Lincoln Rockwell datée du 28 août 1965, « Je suis sortie de la mer pour ce futur plaisir possible, et seulement pour cela, et j’ai commencé à vivre sans espoir, seulement pour la haine ».

A partir de ce moment, Savitri se lança dans une vie itinérante et ascétique. Ses deux activités principales furent de témoigner infatigablement pour le national-socialisme et de s’occuper des animaux sans abri et maltraités, surtout les chats.

Savitri vénérait l’Allemagne nationale-socialiste comme étant une Terre Sainte pour tous les Aryens. Mais elle ne la vit jamais durant ses jours de gloire. Le premier aperçu qu’elle en eut fut en 1948, en ruines. Gold in the Furnace (Calcutta: A.K. Mukherji, 1952) est le sombre et puissant récit de Savitri concernant ses expériences en Allemagne occupée en 1948 et 1949. Mais Savitri ne considérait pas la destruction du Troisième Reich comme la fin du national-socialisme, mais comme une purification – comme une épreuve du feu pour séparer le métal grossier de l’or –, comme le prélude d’un nouveau commencement. Ainsi Gold contient aussi des chapitres sur les fondements philosophiques et le programme politique positif du national-socialisme. En 1949, Savitri fut arrêtée, jugée et emprisonnée par les autorités d’occupation britanniques pour avoir distribué des tracts de propagande nationale-socialiste. Elle décrit son expérience dans Defiance (Calcutta: A.K. Mukherji, 1951). En 1953, Savitri fit un pèlerinage sur les sites sacrés du national-socialisme en Autriche et en Allemagne, le décrivant dans son livre Pilgrimage (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1958).

La plus grande œuvre de Savitri est The Lightning and the Sun (1958), qui synthétise le national-socialisme et la théorie cyclique aryenne de l’histoire et avance l’affirmation stupéfiante que Adolf Hitler était un avatar – une incarnation humaine – du dieu hindou Vishnou, le préservateur de l’ordre. D’après la tradition aryenne, l’histoire se déroule selon des cycles, commençant par un Age d’Or ou Age de Vérité et déclinant à partir de ce moment jusqu’à atteindre le nadir, le quatrième âge, l’Age Obscur ou Kali-Yuga, dans lequel le mal et le mensonge règnent. A ce moment, les forces de décadence périssent de leur propre corruption et un nouvel Age d’Or commence. D’après la tradition hindoue, l’actuel Kali-Yuga sera clos et le prochain Age d’Or inauguré par le dixième avatar de Vishnou, Kalki, le vengeur, qui est représenté comme un guerrier sur un cheval blanc. Quand l’étoile de Hitler montait, Savitri Devi et beaucoup d’Indiens pensaient qu’il était Kalki. Quand il fut vaincu, elle conclut que Hitler n’était pas le dixième avatar, mais seulement son précurseur, et que Kalki était encore à venir.

Dans The Lightning and the Sun, Savitri distingue trois sortes d’hommes en termes de relation avec la trajectoire descendante de l’histoire : les Hommes dans le Temps, les Hommes au-dessus du Temps, et les Hommes contre le Temps. Les Hommes dans le Temps sont ceux qui suivent le courant descendant du temps et qui contribuent à ses tendances désintégrantes. Les Hommes au-dessus du Temps tentent de s’élever au-dessus de la trajectoire descendante de l’histoire et s’isolent de la bassesse du monde. Les Hommes contre le Temps luttent contre la dégénérescence et cherchent à restaurer l’Age d’Or. Leur but, bien sûr, est impossible à atteindre. On ne peut pas inverser le cours du temps. Mais les Hommes contre le Temps sont des combattants-nés. Résister à la décadence est leur devoir, leur destin. Peu importe s’ils ne peuvent pas gagner. Mais même s’ils ne peuvent pas inverser le cours du temps, ils peuvent l’accélérer, c’est-à-dire qu’ils peuvent hâter la destruction de l’Age Obscur et aider à inaugurer un nouvel Age d’Or. La majeure partie du Lightning and the Sun est consacrée à illustrer ces trois types d’hommes à travers trois mini-biographies : Gengis Khan est le paradigme de l’Homme dans le Temps, Akhenaton l’Homme au-dessus du Temps, et Adolf Hitler l’Homme contre le Temps.

L’une des nombreuses manières par lesquelles The Lightning and the Sun est un livre extraordinaire est qu’il est absolument incroyable et absolument irrésistible en même temps. Il est probable que parmi ceux qui l’ont lu, personne ne l’a pris littéralement. Savitri Devi elle-même ne l’a probablement pas pris littéralement. Mais sa vision a une beauté poétique et une puissance explicative. The Lightning and the Sun se situe dans le royaume du mythe. Je pense que le but de Savitri était de créer le mythe fondateur d’une nouvelle religion. Savitri était fascinée par Paul de Tarse, qui fonda une religion en prenant un révolutionnaire politique raté et en le transformant en une incarnation de Dieu, venue pour sauver le monde. Et en moins de trois siècles, la religion créée par Paul triompha de l’Empire Romain. Savitri aussi prit un révolutionnaire politique raté et le transforma en une incarnation de Dieu venue pour sauver le monde. Elle espérait ainsi fonder une religion qui servirait de véhicule pour le triomphe ultime de ses idéaux.

Savitri Devi fut aussi une croisée passionnée du végétarisme, de la protection animale et de l’écologie profonde. Elle résuma ses vues sur ces matières dans Impeachment of Man (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji: 1959). Dans les années 1970, longtemps avant la PETA et le Front de Libération Animale, une Savitri Devi âgée et grincheuse et sa domestique indienne violèrent la loi pour libérer des chats et des chiens destinés aux expériences médicales à l’Institut Pan-Indien des Sciences Médicales à New Delhi. L’autre livre de Savitri sur les animaux est Long-Whiskers and the Two-Legged Goddess, or the true story of a “most objectionable Nazi” and ... half-a-dozen cats (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1965). Autobiographie romancée centrée sur ses relations avec ses chats favoris, c’est le livre de Savitri le mieux écrit et le plus excentrique.

Les autres écrits de Savitri incluent Souvenirs et réflexions d’une Aryenne (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1976), sa présentation la plus complète de sa philosophie ; et And Time Rolls On: The Savitri Devi Interviews (Atlanta: Black Sun Publications, 2005), la transcription publiée de dix heures d’interviews données à New Delhi en 1978, qui constitue une introduction idéale à la vie et à la pensée de Savitri.

Le 100ème anniversaire de Savitri Devi sera honoré aujourd’hui. Mais ce sera une affaire discrète. Quelques-uns de ses amis survivants se téléphoneront et se souviendront. Ceux dont elle a touché les vies sont dispersés autour du globe. Ils ne peuvent pas se réunir pour porter un toast, donc ils le porteront tout seuls. En Allemagne, Regin-Verlag publie un numéro spécial du magazine Junges Forum en l’honneur de Savitri. Ils publient aussi L’Etang aux Lotus et Impeachment of Man en traduction allemande. En Angleterre, la Historical Review Press a publié une nouvelle édition de Gold in the Furnace. Aux Etats-Unis, Black Sun Publications est en train de sortir And Time Rolls On: The Savitri Devi Interviews. Dans le cyberespace, je me flatte de penser que des gens du monde entier lisent ces mots. J’avais aussi espéré que mon site web, la Savitri Devi Archive, apparaîtrait aujourd’hui, mais cela a été reporté. Quand ce sera fait, vous pourrez y acheter des exemplaires de And Time Rolls On.

Comment pouvez-vous honorer Savitri aujourd’hui, si vous en ressentez le besoin ? Dans une lettre à un jeune camarade américain datée du 13 avril 1975, Savitri parlait de la manière dont elle célébrerait le proche anniversaire d’Adolf Hitler :

« C’est juste une courte note pour vous dire comment je penserai à vous (et à tous nos camarades et supérieurs de partout) lors du grand Anniversaire dans une semaine. Il se trouve que ce sera un dimanche cette année, donc grâce aux dieux je n’aurai pas à me rendre à mon travail ennuyeux et je pourrai être entièrement seule et seulement… penser. Je pense que notre Führer aurait maintenant – dans une semaine – 86 ans, s’il était vivant. Et je me demande si nous, les quelques disciples dans la vie desquels Il occupe vraiment la première place, sommes aussi nombreux et fervents que l’étaient les premiers chrétiens en 86 après J.C., c’est-à-dire sous l’Empereur Domitien. Il y avait eu une spectaculaire persécution des chrétiens en 64 après J.C. (sous Néron), mais rien depuis. Mais sûrement on aurait éclaté de rire en entendant dire qu’« un jour » la secte méprisée et de temps en temps persécutée dicterait ses dogmes à tout l’Occident et les imposerait même à des continents et à des îles pas encore découverts. Qui aurait pu imaginer la personnalité et la puissance de Philippe II d’Espagne en ces jours si éloignés ? Et qui peut dire maintenant si naîtra ou pas, dans les 1500 ans à venir, un racialiste aryen aussi puissant, un adorateur de notre Führer, notre équivalent de Philippe II le Catholique ? D’une manière c’est une bonne chose que l’avenir – bien qu’il existe déjà, tout comme le passé – soit totalement imprévisible pour les esprits limités. »

Il est bien que nous ne puissions pas prédire l’avenir, parce que cela nous permet d’espérer. Donc honorez le 100ème anniversaire de Savitri Devi en pensant, et en espérant.

Le 100ème anniversaire de Savitri Devi ne sera pas célébré comme ceux de deux autres philosophes qui sont aussi nés en 1905 : Jean-Paul Sartre et Ayn Rand. Il n’y aura pas de symposiums érudits internationaux, pas d’articles de journaux, pas de T-shirt et de tasses de café souvenirs. Mais il fallait s’y attendre. Après tout, Sartre et Rand – l’un communiste, l’autre individualiste libertaire – sont unis dans leur opposition à tout nationalisme racial, sauf au suprématisme juif (Rand était né juif, et Sartre aurait souhaité l’être). Bref, Sartre et Rand étaient tous deux tout à fait « dans le Temps ». Leurs philosophies sont célébrées précisément parce qu’elles ne défient pas les forces de décadence mais en réalité les défendent et les promeuvent.

Savitri Devi, par contre, était une Femme contre le Temps. Elle ne trouvera pas la renommée dans cet Age Obscur, mais dans l’Age d’Or à venir.








The SAVITRI DEVI Archive

[Ottobre Nero]

Ne m'appelez pas “Mme Devi”

par Savitri Devi

Extrait d’une lettre à Martin Kerr, édité par R.G. Fowler

Traduit par Arjuna




C’est une erreur courante de parler de Savitri Devi en disant « Devi », comme si c’était son nom de famille, de même que nous parlons de Friedrich Nietzsche en disant « Nietzsche ». Savitri explique pourquoi c’est une erreur, dans l’extrait de lettre suivant. Puisque « Devi » n’est pas un nom de famille, mais un titre, et puisque le nom de son mari, Mukherji, ne faisait pas partie de son nom de plume, il n’est pas approprié de les utiliser isolément pour parler d’elle. Son nom de plume choisi est Savitri Devi, et bien qu’il serait comique et prétentieux de dire « Friedrich » pour parler de Nietzsche, il est approprié de dire « Savitri » pour parler de Savitri Devi, un peu comme nous disons « Paul » pour parler de Saint Paul, puisqu’il n’y a pas d’autre choix pour un nom « plus court ».

—R. G. Fowler



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[New Delhi
13 mai 1979]

[. . .]

A propos : ne m’appelez pas « Mme Devi ». Ça ne veut rien dire. Devi (féminin de Deva, c’est-à-dire déesse) est seulement un titre que toute femme hindoue de caste aryenne supposée – brahmane ou kshatriya – est, d’après la tradition, autorisée à mettre après son nom individuel. De nos jours, avec la propagande de la démocratie (un cadeau des missionnaires chrétiens et du système d’éducation britannique), il y a beaucoup de femmes et de jeunes filles indiennes qui s’appellent Untel « Devi » sans aucun droit de le faire – déjà quand je suis arrivée en Inde pour la première fois, mais pas à ce point.

Normalement, une femme d’une caste non-aryenne – c’est-à-dire l’écrasante majorité des femmes indiennes – doit s’appeler Untel Dasi – le mot « Dasi », féminin de « das » (esclave ou servante). La vieille domestique honnête, propre et efficace que nous avions quand Mr. Mukherji et moi vivions sous le même toit à Calcutta était de la caste Maheshya (une caste paysanne du Bengale occidental). Elle s’appelait Sindhubala Dasi – elle n’aurait jamais rêvé de s’appeler « Devi » !

Le nom de Savitri (Energie Solaire – féminin de Savita, l’un des noms de Surya, le Soleil) me fut donné par les filles de l’Université de Shantiniketan où je passai six mois en 1935 à rafraîchir mon bengali (que j’avais appris seule) et à lire le hindi. J’écrivis ensuite un livre en français, L’Etang aux Lotus (The Lotus Pond, impressions sur l’Inde) et pris « Savitri Devi » comme nom de plume approprié. Ensuite (1937 et 1939) j’écrivis deux autres livres en anglais, A Warning to the Hindus et The Non-Hindu Indians and Indian Unity, et les signai « Savitri Devi ».

Je ne connaissais pas alors Mr. Mukherji (jusqu’au 9 janvier 1938). Il me donna son nom – nous étions des camarades de combat – lors de la déclaration de guerre (septembre 1939) pour que je ne sois pas internée par les Britanniques comme étrangère indésirable (j’avais la nationalité grecque) bien connue pour être contre l’effort de guerre britannique, c’est-à-dire du coté allemand, tout comme l’était Mukherji lui-même, mais il fut plus habile que moi.1 Ils le gardèrent deux jours, et il échappa à leurs griffes… tout en continuant ses activités en douce.

Donc je ne suis pas « Mme Devi » mais Mme Mukherji – ou, si vous voulez, Savitri Devi Mukherji – ou Savitri Devi – mais pas « Devi » seulement. Je n’ai pas ajouté Mukherji à mon nom de plume quand je me suis mariée (septembre 1939) parce que trois livres circulaient déjà sous le nom de Savitri Devi…

Avec un chaleureux Heil Hitler !
Savitri Devi Mukherji


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1La comparaison de Savitri est ici obscure, mais elle compare probablement une arrestation autrement inconnue de A.K. Mukherji par les autorités britanniques en Inde à sa propre arrestation ultérieure à Cologne en Allemagne, le 20 février 1949, pour distribution de propagande nationale-socialiste.








The SAVITRI DEVI Archive

[Ottobre Nero]

Savitri Devi, luce d’occidente
by Sigrid Helia

Originally from Savitri Devi, luce d'Occidente | Sigrid Helia




Maximiani Julia Portas, nota più tardi col nome di Savitri Devi, nacque a Lione il 30 settembre 1905 da una famiglia d’origine greca. Giovane molto promettente, Maximiani si distingue particolarmente negli studi. Dopo un corso di studi orientato verso le lingue (giovanissima padroneggerà l’italiano, il francese, l’inglese, e in seguito, il tedesco, l’islandese, il bengali e l’hindi) si appassiona ai testi basilari dell’antichità greco-romana in versione originale. Eccezionalmente eclettica, si appassiona anche allo studio della biologia. Dopo la laurea in Lettere del 1928 a Lione, si dedica anche a studi universitari di fisica e chimica (diplomi universitari in chimica nel 1930 e chimica biologica nel 1931) e nel 1935 ottiene il dottorato in Lettere. Sensibile all’eredità ellenica, affermerà qualche anno più tardi che la Grecia “ha rappresentato una civiltà di ferro, radicata nella verità; una civilizzazione che possedeva tutte le virtù del mondo antico e nessuna delle sue debolezze, tutte le realizzazioni tecniche della modernità senza l’ipocrisia, la meschinità e la miseria morale dell’età moderna”. (Pilgrimage).

Usando le sue competenze linguistiche, percorre il Medio-Oriente alla ricerca di una sopravvivenza reale della sacralità pagana delle origini. Durante un pellegrinaggio in “Terra Santa” rimette in discussione il Cristianesimo, “superstizione dell’uomo” antropocentrica e mortificante “religione di schiavi” a rimorchio d’Israele. Viene attratta da un panteismo “biocentrato” che ricerca a partire dalla feconda eredità di Ipazia, dell’imperatore Giuliano e di Widukind che avevano resistito al nuovo ordine religioso instaurato in Europa due millenni or sono dai settari seguaci di Cristo. Maximiani si stabilisce in India nel 1936 e prende il nome di Savitri Devi in onore delle brillanti anime solari venerate dall’Induismo. Portata dalla sua ricerca verso una spiritualità fondata su un’idea di una gerarchia naturale degli esseri e dei doveri, sarà in questa aryavarta – territorio degli ariani d’oriente – che lei cercherà le virtù che aveva ammirato nei libri: “Gli altri popoli hanno conservato la lista dei propri re e le rovine dei loro templi: hanno una storia. Ma hanno perduto la Tradizione dell’essenziale che l’India conserva”. (L’Etang aux lotus). Si presenta come pellegrina a Swami Satyananda presidente della Missione Indù. Questo movimento di riconquista identitaria e culturale si oppone ai guasti “caritatevoli” prodotti dalla guerra di sovversione condotta dai missionari cristiani che conoscono le basi dell’Induismo ma fanno un “commercio spirituale” della miseria indiana. Egli le spiega la sua visione del mondo, lei si dichiara “Pagana – che ha sempre rifiutato la conversione alla religione di Paolo di Tarso, circuita od imposta, della sua Europa natale -” ed afferma che “vuole lavorare per impedire che il solo ed ultimo paese ad aver mantenuto (almeno in parte) gli Dei ariani – l’India – segua l’esempio funesto dell’Occidente e cada, pure lui, sotto l’influenza spirituale ebraica” (Souvenirs et réflexions d’une aryenne).

Insegna storia indiana e inglese in un college di Delhi e collabora alla traduzione di testi filosofici e religiosi diretti ai paesi occidentali per diffondere ed perpetuare gli insegnamenti dell’Induismo, branca orientale della nostra stessa religiosità scomparsa. Sostenendo l’opinione comune in India secondo la quale Hitler fosse l’avatar occidentale del dio Vishnu, Satyananda accetta l’aiuto di Savitri Devi, anche lei di simpatie nazionalsocialiste, che si propone come conferenziera itinerante nel paese. Strettamente controllata dalla polizia è allora sospettata di fomentare una rivolta nazionalista ad opera di gruppi ostili all’occupazione inglese. Senza ulteriori convenevoli i britannici tentano di assassinarla numerose volte. Lasciando agli aristocratici bramini il compito di resistere con le preghiere lei sceglie consapevolmente la via del kshatriya politico e s’inserisce nei ranghi del RSS, movimento giovanile patriottico antenato del BJP degli anni ’90. Militante radicale, contribuisce a formarne la struttura sul modello fascista italiano. Frequentando le caste più elevate Savitri Devi fa la conoscenza di Asit Krishna Mukherji, un biondo storico bramino che pubblica la rivista nazionalsocialista New Mercury dal 1935 al 1937. Con l’intermediazione del RSS prosegue un lavoro clandestino di sabotaggio anti-britannico sotto forma di pamphlet educativi e di conferenze. Incontra il leader nazionalista indiano Chandra Bose, futuro fondatore dell'Indian National Army che lotterà a fianco del Giappone per scuotere l’India dal vergognoso giogo coloniale. Si diffonde la dottrina dell’Hindutva (proto-nazionalismo divulgato da V. D. Savarkar dal 1929) e Savitri spiega la natura della sua lotta nel saggio A Warning to the Hindus del 1939. Incita il popolo indiano alla vigilanza di fronte al pericolo demografico e culturale musulmano. Sostiene la necessità di “induizzare” preventivamente la vulnerabile massa dei fuori-casta più permeabili ad una religione salvifica di tipo semitico come l’Islam.

La seconda guerra mondiale scoppia in Europa e tutte le attività a carattere filo-tedesco vengono proibite in India. Sospettata di simpatie nazionalsocialiste, Savitri Devi diventa cittadina britannica grazie a Sri Mukherji, che le offre la sua protezione attraverso un matrimonio bianco concluso nel 1940. Durante un decennale percorso iniziatico attraverso l’India, Savitri Devi Mukherji redige degli appunti in un viaggio di centinaia di chilometri da Benares a Peshawar. In queste note divenute L’Etang aux lotus (1940) descrive la frattura che oppone l’inglese, turista pretenzioso e borghese, alla prestanza aristocratica dell’indù. Savitri spiega la sua scelta di campo a favore di un India brulicante e sporca per il suo rifiuto del carattere “febbrile e transitorio” delle nostre società occidentali igieniste ma vacue e false. Espone la sua versione per una strategia che possa superare in modo puntuale i pregiudizi sociali e confessionali e sostiene nel The Non-Hindu Indians and the Indian Unity le ragioni di una riconquista del potere degli autoctoni.

Questo sentimento nazionale fabbricato frettolosamente non trova che un'eco modesta in territori dove la coscienza patriottica si limita di sovente alla semplice sopravvivenza della propria casta. A partire dal 1942 Savitri Devi si entusiasma per Akhenaton, faraone del XIV secolo prima di Cristo, conosciuto in Egitto per aver imposto una riforma religiosa monoteista a carattere solare. Ci si potrebbe chiedere che tipo d’interesse possa nutrire una pagana verso un settario seguace di Aton, dio unico in nome del quale furono distrutti i templi dei suoi antenati. Tuttavia, esisterebbe un legame lontano, nelle pretese origini ariane del faraone. Il culto di Aton, applicato come soluzione alle diatribe spirituali delle nostre società moderne permetterebbe di riunire un Occidente e un Oriente ariano rigenerato con il legame comune di una spiritualità solare. Una visione del mondo archeofuturista che ci viene proposta, ben prima di Faye, nel A Son of God: The Life and Philosophy of Akhnaton, King of Egypt scritto tra il 1942 e il 1945 a Calcutta.

Dopo un soggiorno indiano d’otto anni grazie al suo “assegno in bianco” nuziale, Savitri parte per rifugiarsi in Europa con un passaporto inglese in tasca… Nel 1944 percorre una Francia sconvolta. Nel The Lightning and the Sun, pubblicato clandestinamente a Calcutta nel 1958, farà l’analisi della sconfitta del suo campione. Secondo lei, Hitler era stato davvero l’avatar di Vishnu venuto a ristabilire l’ordine tradizionale e a risalire la corrente temporale del Kali-Yuga o età oscura per arrivare al Satya-Yuga o età dell’Oro. Nel suo libro definisce una gerarchia nell’attitudine dell’Uomo a confrontarsi col Kali-Yuga, fine di ciclo caratterizzata dall’inversione dei valori tradizionali. C’è innanzitutto l’Uomo dei tempi ultimi che, avido d’oro e d’onori si agita egoisticamente per i propri interessi. Poi c’è quello che, al di sopra dei tempi, rifiuta ogni coinvolgimento nel mondo e si orienta verso la spiritualità. Questo è generalmente il Bramino incompreso e beffeggiato. Solo per ultimo viene l’Uomo che si oppone ai tempi, il mistico militante che applica con violenza la volontà divina di restaurazione dell’età dell’Oro. Secondo Savitri Devi, Hitler era quest’Uomo, e la sua morte non mette minimamente in causa il combattimento contro i tempi.

Nel 1945, con la fine della guerra, termina a Lione il suo manoscritto Impeachment of Man che sarà pubblicato a Londra nel 1959. Impregnato di filosofia orientale, manifesta una volontà integrale di difesa degli animali e la sua avversione radicale verso la caccia, la corrida e la macellazione. Esprime il suo favore all’eugenetica e all’eutanasia come misure di salute pubblica e prevenzione in un mondo in cui il problema demografico cresce in modo rapidissimo sia nel terzo mondo che altrove. Spinta dalla sua missione, indifferente alla repressione delle idee connesse all’ideologia sconfitta, Savitri Devi prosegue candidamente la sua ricerca della Tradizione sperando di ricostruire un'Europa sull’esempio indo-ariano dei Veda.

Nel corso delle sue peregrinazioni in occidente in qualità di costumista di teatro si reca in Islanda, in Svezia passando per Inghilterra e Germania dove viene arrestata nel 1948 con l’imputazione di “propaganda nazionalsocialista”. Viene condannata a tre anni nella prigione di Werl, sconta solo sei mesi dopo di che torna a divulgare la fede della nuova Europa. Ammessa nelle confraternite dei veterani di guerra imprigionati con lei viene rilasciata grazie all’intervento del marito. Nel 1950, Savitri Devi pubblica Defiance, autobiografia della sua missione di propaganda in Germania e della sua discesa nelle carceri del sistema. Due anni dopo edita Gold in the Fornace che tratta delle condizioni di vita quotidiane nella Germania del dopoguerra, dei suoi incontri con i fedeli nazionalsocialisti che resistono all’occupazione alleata. Nonostante un’interdizione all’accesso nel territorio decide di rivedere i suoi amici tedeschi verso la fine del 1952 grazie ad un passaporto falso. L’anno successivo entra in Austria e visita i luoghi della giovinezza del Führer. Dall’Obersalzberg a Monaco fino a Norimberga si riavvicina spiritualmente agli avvenimenti che non aveva vissuto perché impegnata in una lotta antesignana dall’altra parte del mondo. Nel suo Pilgrimage del 1958 il lato militante fa posto ad una gnosi nazionalsocialista con riferimenti all’Induismo che si oppone ad un mondo desacralizzato ed ostile.

All’inizio degli anni ’50 Savitri Devi conosce Otto Skorzeny, l’intrepido liberatore di Mussolini, organizzatore tra il 1949 ed il 1952 della rete di fuga ODESSA, che la presenta a Leon Degrelle, il capo rexista belga comandante della divisione SS Wallonie. Nel 1962 l’inglese Colin Jordan fonda la World Union of National – Socialist (WUNS). Nei paesi del nord Europa si pensa che possa essere il segnale di rinnovamento tanto atteso da Savitri Devi che si precipita in Inghilterra, per diventare membro fondatore e fervente attivista di questa organizzazione. Nel 1967 Savitri Devi convinta dalla lettura de La menzogna di Ulisse comincia ad influenzare il futuro editore Ernst Zündel.

Torna in India, sua terra di elezione a sessantacinque anni. Nel 1971 termina il suo manoscritto Souvenirs et réflexions d’une aryenne, opera magistrale che consacra una vita intera d’impegno e di lotta. Con il suo stile epico mescolato a solide basi filosofiche costituisce una fondamentale opera di riferimento. Stabilitasi a Delhi presso il marito Sri Mukherji, Savitri Devi redige Ironies et paradoxes dans l’historie et la légende, antologia di curiosità storiche legate alla “doppia morale” giudaica ereditata dall’occidente cristiano. Sempre in relazione con l’Europa viene contattata nel 1978 da Ernst Zündel che la sottopone ad una lunga intervista registrata della durata di dieci ore. Passano tre anni ed il desiderio di rivedere l’Europa diviene troppo forte. Savitri Devi torna in Germania e nuovamente in Francia dove soggiorna vicino a Losanna. Nel 1982 viene invitata in America per una serie di conferenze. Parte con fatica verso l’Inghilterra ed al momento dell'imbarco viene colta da un infarto che la uccide. Nel luogo dove riposano le ceneri del fondatore del movimento statunitense Rockwell, l’urna funeraria di Savitri Devi troneggia insieme a quelle d’altre icone di personaggi che si sono opposti ai tempi. Sotto la corona mortuaria secondo le sue volontà c’è una runa Man capovolta.

Per la devozione irrazionale che una sposa mistica vota al suo dio, Savitri Devi è rimasta fedele alla fede purissima delle origini ariane dell’Occidente. Comprendendo la Tradizione nella sua accezione più ampia, lontanissima dalla contingenza meschina di nazionalismi e sciovinismi moderni, ella ha fatto sua la legge brahmanica del “tutto è uno” che coordina ciascun elemento dell’Universo al suo posto adeguato. La reputazione di questa donna straordinaria, che ha compiuto il giro dei nazionalismi contemporanei, provoca a qualcuno un sorriso compassato, ad altri un'ammirazione incondizionata per la testimonianza vivente della fede di Wewelsburg e della Bhagavad Gita. In tutti i casi, tuttavia, il suo ricordo impone il rispetto dovuto al soldato politico, all’Essere contro i suoi Tempi.




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